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TEDx Talks
Published: 2017-08-31
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isO5ROFbS0Q
when I was five years old I hated going to the barber sitting still is hard enough the thing that got to me the most with those clippers to me they were nothing more than a series of guilty in sharp blades ready to lock my head off with one careless can barber needless to say cursed with jeans it made my hair grow quickly I had many encounters
with those clippers and many of my hair cuts continuous screaming kicking and crying but one day a new barber came to me he said you see this clippers bring a red clippers these are the hot clippers they're the ones that hurt no wonder why you don't like haircuts but other guys been using them on you the whole time and they took out another pair of clippers
he said these of the blow clippers at these are cool clippers they don't hurt they actually feel quite nice tell you what I'll use these on you instead and from that moment on my ex to the barber was overcome by his very clever use of suggestion something that is ubiquitous and unavoidable suggestion has many purposes it has many ways of manifesting you can make us fall
in love in a can induce hate you can conjure memories it could make us forget they can make us buy certain products and vote for certain political candidates it can be a form of a recommendation such as what movie to see what restaurant to go to I can even in other forms change once and higher perception the world of the world so does my case in
my laboratory work which I assess whether people have the capability of experiencing phenomena associate with hypnosis such as hallucinating or changing personalities but one thing we could say about suggestion is that its power is hard for the night the government sanctioned commission was formed to investigate this purported medical treatment and frets but supposedly cured a lot ailments ranging from chronic pain to psycho Jenna blindness the
commission after a very rigorous investigations concluded that the curators were mostly genuine how is this treatment methods manifested by using magnets but magnets wouldn't making this killer supposedly bought the commission said it was not magnetism rather it was the use of suggestion suggestion that was used to invoke the imagination and the belief of the patients in the process of feeling that was responsible and nothing to
do with Matt now who led this very impressive finding Benjamin Franklin in seventeen eighty four now what's prep more interesting about this interesting historical anecdote is that very little has been made of this research over last two hundred twenty five years the closest thing we have is possible research in which drug researchers will give patients a fake drug the placebo that looks like a medication that
hasn't no medicinal properties or the real drug and they compare the effect of the actual medicine with expectation of healing to see what the effect it and the hope is to find the drug that has the maximum benefit but only read recently has the paradigm shifted and how they start looking towards this mind body interaction and the results have been quite fascinating a study at Baylor
University gave patients with Austria for arthritis of the need either real surgery or a sham surgery in which they cut open the knee and then start right back up both groups had the same amount of improvement in healing at the university of Colorado patients were here participants were given a study a nasal spray which was supposedly a very powerful analgesic a pain killer not only did
their subjective ratings of physical pain actually decrease when given an actual painful stimulus the rains almost all pain also decreased as these participants were selected because they had recently ended a long term romantic relationship but in my opinion the best use of placebo came from a North Dakota drug store in which a very clever pharmacist came up with the magical formula to rid young children of
monsters in the closet now suggestion is not limited solely to placebo studies it happens in various realms of psychology in research a study with weight lifters had participants got a suggestion for increased strength and power before doing the bench press those who receive the suggestion about bench pressing average of twenty three more pounds compared to the baseline and this was a comparison to the control group
that got no suggestion and had virtually no gain in dermatological studies suggestions for clear skin have been known to clear up warts impatience I have been shown to rival chemical treatments and it opens studies of pain sometimes suggestion has been found to be equally effective to be effective opioids and sometimes out those opioids and it comes without the painful addictive properties inside a fax what's interesting
about all the suggestions is that they can be produced by oneself through a process that I called what is often called self talk so stop is nothing more than a series of self administered suggestions for some affect I recently conducted a study with participants who are capable of experiencing a delusion through suggestion specifically in the study they were told to believe that their favorite sports team
had just won a major championship for Philadelphia sports teams a delusion is what it takes after explaining with great zeal excitement how their team won and what they did to celebrate the suggestion was canceled and then they were told a strategy to produce that same experience by themselves without any direct interaction from me their ratings of subjective realness of the delusion was equally strong when they
produce it themselves then when I gave it to that it was all through the use of self talk and self talk has a lot of power to produce all these things read the funny at the to see in stage hypnosis all the way to the healing benefits of hypnotherapy just by talking to yourself in the right way now you might be saying well if self talk
is so beneficial why we not reaping its benefits more often the truth of the matter is we use self talk all the time but often in negative and destructive ways in a demonstration I do with my students every year I ask them to stand up and then rate how easy it was for them to do so on a scale of one to ten with ten being
the easiest I didn't tell them to take those same pessimistic attitudes that students have about school work and has a high school teacher in college instructor I hear them all the time I'm gonna fail this test this project not worth my time it's worthless it's hopeless I tell them take those same pessimistic statements that they often say to themselves but to apply it to getting out
of their seats to tell themselves that it's worthless they have no effort no potential nope no pension no ability got out there see if they were to try to do it it's going to be hopeless the effect is a significant increase in difficulty in getting other chairs Val if simple self talk can adversely affect something as mundane as getting out of your seat in what ways
is adversely affecting us in our lives in our relationships when the ball field in the classroom if we can change our self talk we can have lots of improvement but we use a stick of self talk so often that is adversely affects us one of the major facets of depression is when people use this negative and destructive self taught say their life is no good and
not worth living and many people think concentrates affection could probably think of times when they set themselves not to trust those people not like then thereby strengthening their biases and the prejudices change your self talk can effect a positive change now you might be saying you know I tried something like this before one day I said to myself I'm gonna get this project done and it's
still not done why well for two reasons for this first positive self talk is little more difficult than negative self talk take for example that school project that you want to do I'm sitting on my couch and I decide that I'm gonna get up and do that project that's due next week I have to go through a series of steps I have to get out the
couch good my desk read over this I'm do some background research make an outline type up the paper print out the paper proofread and then turn it all of these things requiring their own special type of self talk to overcome the potential barriers that might be there if on the other hand I wish not to do that paper all I have to say to myself is
skip sitting and it won't get done the second reason perhaps the more important reason is that we often try to use simple self talk phrases for tasks that are way too elaborate difficult for those particular simple phrases and often yields little take for example the smoking habit for a smoker the harmful how that one supplier can actually serve a number of benefits it could well boredom
we can reduce tension they can substitute as a server the substitute other types of harmful habitual behaviors simply saying to yourself I'm going to quit smoking does little to address those very specific dynamics as to why one still continues to smoke so then how do we go about engaging in positive self talk to affect changes that we truly want in our lives I don't for over
a series of tips first stick to the specific instead of saying to yourself on the ace the test refocus and say I will maintain my focus as I study for the test instead of saying I will run faster save yourself I can keep this pace the more I run stick to the specific and work your way up work on the minor elements of the task that
you wish to a cop second stick affirmations and avoid negations the statement stay focused and don't get distracted may convey the same meaning but the former is often more effective than the the latter it produces change no one likes to be told what not to do and we have a tendency to value those things that were supposedly paid to or can't have we dislike don't knock
and know so much that we may tend to ignore it if not implicitly the same holds true if we try to impose limitations ourselves if we tell ourselves not to do something we might be more likely to do it but if instead we offer ourselves a different alternative to pursue we are more likely to be successful focus on what you want as opposed to what you
don't want third engage your imagination as you go through yourself talk make them the most important element to believe is the inevitable commitment of one's imagination to an idea we believe it because we can imagine it and this is so where we can actually buying cages in the self taught but also use your imagination we can be better self talkers for that smoking habit as you
tell yourself I could be smoke free imagining that physical urged rating from your body can actually just the craving for cigarettes telling yourself that you can be happy while imagine the sensations that come with feelings of joy have been shown to improve your mood and when you are in when you encounter those stereotypes that you might have telling yourself that they are wrong while at the
same time imagining specific examples that counter that stereo type have been shown to reduce measures of implicit bias in that demonstration I do with my students where they have difficulty standing up because they're told that they're not able to do so I then follow up with them I say let's do the opposite tell yourself that you're going to be great at it tell yourself that you
are going to be wonderful and that when you do it imagine that you could do was passion such energy such amazing strength they'll be the easiest thing you have ever done and just by changing that self talk and engaging in that imagination you actually have both in effect of standing up that's easier than what it normally is finally practice it may seem a little odd at
first to engage in a positive self talk especially after engagement so much negative self talk for so long and they take some time before those crafted statements start to take hold but much like any particular after or athlete who is good at their craft they may have struggled at first when I first began but they got better at it with concerted effort and practice the same
is true for self taught now some people possess traits that make them better self talkers and we'll have better effects himself up and other people but much like learning how to play a musical instrument everybody can learn to do it at least a little if you're willing to put forth the now let me be clear I do not wish to contend that self pop is the
panacea to all of life's problems it will not cure depression it will not end racism and prejudice I will not strike out laziness and procrastination from the dictionary but given how negative self talk can make those things worse they can only help likewise self talk should not be a substitute for any established their peer intervention but many therapists who engage in psychotherapy will often talk about
